B-2's do a practice run over Korea

Washington Post:

Two B-2 “Spirit” aircraft, nuclear-capable stealth bombers that are as wide as a 17-story building is tall, took off early on Thursday from an air force base just outside of Knob Noster, Mo. They flew across the Pacific Ocean, past the Korean peninsula, to a small island in the Yellow Sea, where they dropped some inert munitions before flying all the way back to Missouri.

Such exercises are rare, or at least rarely publicized: after it was over, the U.S. military announced the practice bombing run, the first time it has ever acknowledged a B-2 mission over the Korean peninsula, according to a New York Times story.

Why conduct such an elaborate exercise? A big part of the answer is, of course, as a deterrent to North Korea’s recent provocations, which have included severing emergency communication lines with the South, announcing a state of readiness for war and threatening “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes on the U.S.

But there may be something more going on here. Pyongyang’s latest threats are not new; although U.S. shows-of-force are part of the routine, this was an unusually dramatic way to demonstrate American deterrent capability. It’s possible that the bombing test run was also meant as a message to South Korea. That would be a deterrence of a very different sort: not from war, but from the possibility that this long-reliant American ally might seek to develop its own nuclear weapons program.

South Korea has long been under the American nuclear “umbrella,” meaning that the U.S. extends its nuclear deterrent to South Korean soil. But, over the last year, a small group of right-leaning South Korean politicians and opinion-makers have been arguing that their country should develop its own “indigenous” nuclear weapons. And South Koreans appear to be increasingly persuaded: a recent poll estimated that two thirds of the country supported the plan.

According to a New York Times story on the rising South Korean calls for a nuclear program of its own, the public support is less about fear of the North (although that’s certainly part of it) than it is about doubts that Uncle Sam will always be there to help out....

... 

I think South Korea will naturally want its own deterrent and it has the knowledge and industrial base to build it.  It is much more prosperous than the North and could easily build a force that could wipe out the Norks.  The same is true of Japan which has also been threatened by the North Korean bluster.

The B-2 is a very expensive aircraft and we have less than a handful of them.  They would not be sent on an operational flight during the daytime.